The Milken Family Foundation announces the selection of 13 exceptional Los Angeles-area high school seniors as 2010 Milken Scholars. Recipients will each receive a $10,000 scholarship in addition to ongoing support and resources during their academic and professional careers.

Elellee Omar

Elellee Omar, a graduate of City Honors High School, will attend Princeton University.

Elellee Omar, a top student at City Honors High School, "impossibility is but a figment of adult imagination; endless possibility is a childhood truth I have never forgotten." Despite a myriad of obstacles, she doesn't permit the life circumstances she can't control to affect the ones she can. Elellee's insightful formula for creating opportunities is the pairing of persistence and patience with determination and ambition. This fall she will enter Princeton University to study political science while also considering a career in medicine. Elellee is currently writing three books and expects one day to be a published author. Already her literary talents have been recognized as she won a poetry slam competition and was runner-up in a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech contest. To encourage young learners to appreciate literature, she volunteered in the children's division at the Inglewood Public Library and also tutored elementary students in their classrooms.

Ashley Thaxton

Ashley Thaxton, a graduate of John Marshall Fundamental High School, will attend New York University.

"Ashley Thaxton shines with a true and noble light every moment of her life," says an AP English teacher at John Marshall Fundamental High School. An extraordinary student, Ashley is class Valedictorian, a National Merit Finalist, an AP Scholar with Distinction and winner of the Wellesley Book Award. In addition to her straight "A" record, which merited inclusion on the Principal's Honor Roll throughout middle and high school, she earned a perfect SAT Writing score of 800. Ashley presides over the National Honor Society, serves on the School Site Council and is a member of the Science Bowl team, which competes in a yearly science and academic competition at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her community service efforts garnered national acclaim as she received the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership 4 Service Award, was chosen an Elks Most Valuable Scholar and was named to the 2010 Tournament of Roses Royal Court.